This invention is directed, in general, to rotary file cabinets of a type having a pair of opposed walled sides and a pair of opposed open sides.
In use, such cabinets are designed to be closely arranged in a row intermediately of a room, so as to present the appearance of a partition wall having at opposite sides thereof a continuous wall appearance when all of the walled sides of the cabinets face the room. This arrangement also enables a user standing at either side of the room to rotate any selected cabinet in the row in either direction so as to present either of its open or walled sides to face him. A cabinet is considered to be open when its open sides face the room; and it is considered to be closed when its walled sides face the room.
Such cabinets are of quadrate form and, when arranged in a row, a space must necessarily be provided between neighboring cabinets to enable unobstructed rotary movement of one cabinet relative to the other. This is so primarily because of the various corners of the cabinets. It is accordingly required that the spaces be concealed in some suitable manner in order to obtain the intended and greatly desired continuous wall appearance in the closed condition of the cabinets.
An attempt to solve this spacing problem has been made with known rotary file cabinets by housing them in an outer stationary overall cabinet provided with vertical panels arranged to front the spacing. In this manner some degree of a continuous wall appearance is obtained in the closed condition of the several file cabinets. A particular disadvantage of this arrangement is the cost of the outer cabinet and the labor required to assemble the individual cabinets in the outer cabinet or to disassemble them for purposes of repair, transport or repositioning.
A general object of the present invention is to provide a rotary file cabinet which avoids the faults and consequent disadvantages associated with known rotary file cabinets.
A further object of the invention is to provide a rotary file cabinet having a pair of opposed wall sides and a pair of open sides, and which can be arranged in a row with other cabinets so as to present in a closed condition the appearance of a continuous wall without the necessity of an outer overall cabinet or housing.
A more particular object of the invention is to provide a rotary file cabinet with doors adjacent its wall sides, which doors can be closed so as to extend or cover over approximately one-half of the spaces separating it from neighboring cabinets in a row of file cabinets, the other half of the spaces being coverable by the doors of the neighboring cabinets. When the doors are closed, the desired continuous wall appearance is obtained.
Another object of the invention is to provide manually operable mechanism for opening and closing the doors of a rotary file cabinet, whereby the doors at both sides of the cabinet may be actuated to an open or closed condition by a user located at at either side of the cabinet. In the open condition of the doors the cabinet can be rotated without any part thereof striking a neighboring cabinet.
And a further, though not the last of the objects of the invention is to provide manually operable door opening and closing mechanism for a rotary file cabinet which functions upon opening or closing the doors to restrain them in such condition against wobble or loose movement.